All shelf space is limited to the space available. This is a problem domestically and commercially. It is a particular problem for retail establishments, where success can be measured by sales per area, and for grocery and convenience stores, especially, because of the diversity of goods such stores carry. Therefore, competition among suppliers for shelf space is keen and a way of providing extra shelf space would be desirable.
Shelf space limits are even more significant in some special cases, as where the environment of the shelf is heated or cooled, for example. In such cases, not only the space available, but also the added cost of maintaining the environment about the shelf has to be considered.
In grocery and convenience stores, for example, goods such as beverages are desirably stocked in so-called visi-coolers and walk-in coolers. These coolers are refrigerated units having glass doors to display the goods. As used herein, a walk-in cooler is distinguished from a visi-cooler by having a space of several inches between the inside of its closed glass door and the fronts of the shelves for goods In the walk-in cooler.
In addition to displaying the goods, visi-coolers and walk-in coolers also stock the goods. More than one of each product is desired for successive supply. However, as goods in the front are removed, additional stocks of the goods toward the rear of the cooler become increasingly remote from the glass door that displays them and, therefore, less conspicuously offered for sale. What is an inconvenience in having to reach for a good at the back of a domestic refrigerator becomes even more undesirable in a commercial establishment.
Therefore, it is a common commercial practice to incline shelves so that successive goods move forward by gravity to the front when the good from the front is removed for sale. Shelves in visi-coolers, walk-in coolers and other places often are set in their structures by clips that engage notches that progress at intervals vertically at the corners of the shelves. In such arrangements, it is often a simple matter to set the clips for the fronts of the shelves a notch or two lower than the clips for the rears of the shelves to provide a desired incline.
With such inclined shelves for beverages, particularly, in commercial visi-coolers and walk-in coolers, it is known to stock the goods in glide racks that assure that the goods successively move down the incline in an orderly fashion that maintains their display for sale at the shelf fronts. For this, the glide racks frequently provide a row of channels across their upper surfaces that are each designed to slide a single file of goods down the incline. The fronts of the channels have lips that stop the goods from sliding off the front and the bottoms of the glide racks have structures that fix the glide racks to the shelves so that the glide racks themselves do not slide forward off the shelves. When glide racks are used, the shelves themselves may have relatively wide gaps in their structures for lightness and air circulation, for example, and the glide racks may also have openings for the same reasons, although these must be small enough to provide stable sliding support for the goods.
With inclined shelves, especially with glide racks, it is possible to limit the vertical space between shelves, because only the goods in the front have to be removed. Only limited clearance has to be provided above the goods on a shelf, because it is not necessary to reach over the tops of the front goods to remove goods from the rear of the shelf. This permits additional shelf space in the same volume of visi-cooler or walk-in cooler, for example.
Even with this addition to shelf space, however, competition for shelf space still remains keen. Therefore, a way of adding even more shelf space is still desired.